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A Time for Mourning
When a peaceful protestor was recently shot dead by a member of Antifa, the news was spotty at first. The reports went out that it was an Antifa member who was killed, and the left-wing crowds gathered to riot. Instead, the news was clarified that an Antifa member killed a Trump supporter. The Antifa members were proud. They said the man deserved it for being a “Fascist,” and that murdering him was merely, “taking out the trash.”
The Antifa member who murdered him fled across state lines. Federal Marshals attempted to arrest him. He did not comply, and fired at the Marshals. They returned fire, and now he is dead. Let us not make the same mistake Antifa made. Yes, he was a violent man and an assassin who died violently resisting arrest. He did not have to die, but he chose to resist arrest with a firearm. It was his choice. It was a bad choice. We can acknowledge these truths without celebration. We can be better than to say something similar to what Antifa members said about his victim.
Instead, let us acknowledge that a man is dead. He has no more ability to learn the lessons of this life. He has no ability to repent or make up for wrongs to others he may have committed in this life. His choices did not take him down a constructive path.
Let our choices, even in this moment, be better.
Published in Religion & PhilosophyFor Whom the Bell Tolls
John DonneNo man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
I reserve the right to mock and deride Antifa and its associated ilk. Even when the stupid prize they’ve won is death.
You make your choices.
Also, I suspect a lot more people will be winning that prize in the near future.
“Each man’s death diminishes me.” Really? Only in the most distant, most idealistic, most poetic, most half-baked philosophy is this true.
Do we not all have the same heritage? Had this man made better choices, he might have improved all of our lives. Instead, he chose to go down the road of hatred and violence. How many others are close to the edge of going down his path? Is it better that they do? Or should we all work to find ways to help them make better choices? We have to demonstrate those better choices we wish to teach. That is the first step.
Charlie, how does the death of a cobbler in Timbuktu “diminish” me?
A commenter at Daily Wire wrote this:
“The system failed him” they love to chant. Well this mentally ill person resisted arrest and unlawfully carried a weapon. Instead of locking him up and away from the riots. Portland put him back. Now he’s dead, Wheeler. Not to mention the kid who actually was peacefully protesting. The system is failing alright.
There are many beliefs and assumptions I hold that you do not hold, Kent. If you see no God, you can neither see yourself nor the cobbler as a child of God. If you do not believe in spirit, you cannot see that you share a kinship in spirit with that cobbler. If you see the Bible as nothing more than literature, then it is probably useless to speak of the Christian ideal.
Speaking strictly materially, maybe that cobbler in Timbuktu doesn’t matter to your day-to-day existence. But how you treat his life and his death when word reaches you of it is still a choice you can make.
The system is not failing. It is being sabotaged from within by those who think they have better ideas, even though those ideas have never worked in all the history of mankind.
And there’s another point to be made. Reinoehl wrote on his Instagram account:
And in the video of police rushing into the street to make a single arrest, with a truck loudspeaker blaring that the police were coming, afterward a young woman could be heard protesting in a weak, incredulous voice, “At least give us some warning. That was dangerous.”
Maybe this man’s death can be a warning to these naive overgrown children just what they’re getting themselves into: that their leaders and comrades are violent criminals who are both homicidal and suicidal.
If it does nothing more, it will have served greatly.
Sabotage causes the system to fail. That’s what it does. And as well, it can be argued that the system that released him despite an arrest warrant for a weapons charge failed two people.
I would say that sabotage destroys. “Saboteurs destroy the system.” Active voice. “The system fails.” passive voice. There is a big difference.
Okay. I would explain: Throwing the sabot into the machinery causes the system to fail. It’s the act and the instrument. The causation of the failure is the point.
And I was repeating the sound of your use of your word sabotage. I’m happy with the phrasing. What are you anyway? Some published writer?! (Oh, that’s right. Nevermind.)
:)
I won’t celebrate his death — such a waste — but I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead either. We all make our choices. Shooting at the police was a poor one.
Angry Vietnam era protests did decline a lot in the months after Kent State, because for many the idea of confronting law enforcement was no longer a game (which is not to say the Guard soldiers firing live ammo was right. But protestors figured out there could be major negative consequences if things really went wrong).
But the dynamic is different than 50 years ago, because that protest didn’t take place after months of similar protests encouraged by state and local officials. If the reflexive actions of the politicians in Portland, Oregon and in neighboring Washington State, Seattle and elsewhere this weekend is to double down on their tacit support of the rioters because they somehow think Reinohel’s death will create a firestorm of opposition to Trump, all you’re going to end up with is ongoing riots that get more violent, because they’ll see Portland and other places even more as sanctuary cities for the worst of their behavior.
I mourn for his choices. Not for the outcome…
I mourn if he never had the opportunity to know differently.
I realize our being relieved or happy about his death leaves Lefties seeing no distinction between us and them, and my drawing distinctions sounds like partisan justifications.
I don’t go around being giddy with glee when awful people get shot and die. But I also don’t mourn. It is serious and should be treated with gravity, not levity. My saying “good, he deserved it” is not communication of giddy glee, but that a primal justice has been served for a primal injustice.
I’m not going to mourn the death of a cold blooded murdering anarchist whose goal was to destroy our country and replace it with totalitarian Peoples Republic.
I wish the guy was alive and spouting his nutty revolutionary ideas during his trial. Now the unmoored media will attempt to redefine him into a martyr who was killed after previously defending lives of others on the streets.
Yep.
Correct.
Nor have Mayor Wheeler’s choices, nor his DA’s, nor Oregon Governor Brown’s, nor her state attorney general’s. But this guy’s death can be mourned only in the sense that all deaths are the result of sin, and this guy surrendered himself to his passions wholeheartedly. Yes, he can no longer repent, but would he have wanted to?
CS Lewis, in The Great Divorce, tragically illustrates how so many people choose to hang onto their passions, in pride embracing their spiritual and physical deaths, rather than surrendering and letting go of such things. We cannot follow such people and pull them out of the hell they made for themselves – they’re like people at the bottom of a pit who refuse the rope offered them because they demand others join them at the bottom.
As for arresting him? What hope of a trial would there be when so many in the courts have openly or covertly chosen sympathy with the rioters? Put simply, if all you get is a phony trial after a sham investigation, or, worse yet, no trial at all because charges are dropped (as they were with this nut), I would argue that is fundamentally worse than missing an arrest due to a shootout. In fact, this practically guarantees that the cops will eventually see more value in killing rioters than arresting them. After all, if the DA is going to charge you with trumped up civil violations anyway, and then undo your work, you might as well make going to trial worth it for yourself.
Historically you saw this same dilemma of undercharging and overcharging in 18th and early 19th century England, where even petty crimes could get you hanged. In that environment, if you’re going to be hanged for robbery anyway if caught, might as well murder the homeowner first – not like they can hang you twice. So it soon will be in Portland – if the city is going to keep treating cops like dirt while letting actual criminals off, then what cops remain have all the more reason to just take the law into their own hands. Portland is a civil insurrection at this point, and mayor Wheeler should be arrested and removed from office for dereliction of duty and criminal malfeasance. Frankly, the Oregon governor should be removed too. Given that they are in alliance, the feds should remove them.
And for those who avoid the revolutionary madness:
“Looters and rioters will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.”
From your lips to the proper federal authorities’ ears.
I wonder how many of the rioters have considered that the cops, courts and prisons they want to abolish are the only things keeping them alive right now. Abolish those and you abolish the law along with them, and there is no longer any reason for the people tired of their crap to not do something about it.
Exactly. And every day of rioting, we come closer to it. The politicians think they will ride the wave of riots to victory. They may find it leads to an early grave instead.
And dispose of the dead bodies, too. That’s even more important. It’s an issue of hygiene.
I, for one, am sorry he died. I am concerned that his death may muddy up issues if there is any question of his guilt.
Besides, if guilty, he deserved the ordeal of waiting for trial and the uncertainty of his fate. And if found guilty, the uncertainty of whether he would be sentenced to death (assuming a federal prosecution–I don’t know whether Oregon has the death penalty).
I wish he was in custody and being presented with the opportunity to make some amends by turning in his comrades. My guess is he wouldn’t, that he’d
dohave done a Rosenberg, but it would be a good thing if the hit team he was part of, and their trainers and handlers, and their network, and their funders, were out of circulation.Even his immediate family isn’t moved to mourn.